


Butterfly Wings

by ElDiablito_SF



Category: Defiance (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Christmas, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abortion, implied prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-28
Updated: 2014-11-28
Packaged: 2018-02-27 08:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2686049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kenya has known Amanda her whole life.  Only it was a different Kenya and now she's only got Amanda's memories of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Butterfly Wings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deense](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deense/gifts).



Kenya Rosewater doesn’t really know what to call herself anymore. She thinks, perhaps, she should just pick the name of another (former) African country. Surely others must have perished the same day that Kenya was blown up. And who does that, anyways? Who names their daughter after a humanitarian disaster? Humans, that’s who, she supposes. No self-respecting Indogene, like herself.

Though she can’t exactly remember ever being an Indogene.

So, Kenya it is then. For now. She doesn’t have long, anyway. She stole this roller with hopes that the Spirit Riders don’t come after her. They’ll have it back soon enough because she’s probably going to die in it. Wrapped around a tree, if she’s lucky, not fallen to pieces. Literal pieces. She wonders what they’ll think of it all when they find her body. Half man, half fish. Half human, half Indogene. Half Kenya, made up only of Amanda’s memories, not even put together well enough to pass for the real Kenya. What a hack job!

Perhaps if she remembers clearly enough, she might even convince herself that it was all real. Right before she goes the way of the eternal sleep. She wraps the blanket (stolen along with the roller) around herself and huddles in the back of the roller. And tries to remember.

***

“Mandy” is what Connor calls her sister. _Mandy._ It’s so soft and delicate, like the tiny scales on the wing of a butterfly, it’s nothing like Amanda. Amanda is no butterfly: if you brush the scales off, if you trap her in a killing jar, she won’t crumble, won’t suffocate - no. She is a phoenix, rising from the ashes of everything that’s ever happened to her.

Connor doesn’t know, though.

Connor thinks the baby is his. And Kenya tries to convince Amanda to just tell him the truth, but that would bring the monster back, would make him real. And she can’t do that to Amanda either. So she takes her to the woman she knows in what used to be the East Village, and if they ever speak about it again, Kenya doesn’t have that memory.

She doesn’t remember going out that night, and picking up that john, the one who had originally told her about the six legged monkey walk (little did he know she would perfect it and put it on the menu in a different world, in her life, in Defiance). But she does remember the alpaca blanket that she buys with that hard-earned money for Amanda that night, or rather, Amanda remembers it well. The way the fabric felt against the pads of her fingers - such a rarity, what a precious gift. An echo of a country long gone and an animal that could never have survived. Kenya can’t even remember ever seeing an “alpaca” pictured. But Amanda wraps the blanket around her slender frame, closes her eyes, puts her head on Kenya’s shoulder, and Kenya holds her and tells her everything will be all right. 

But it won’t be all right. Nothing will ever be the same. Not with the ghost of that baby between Amanda and Connor. Kenya sits there and watches her sister cry. And then, after once again rejecting her pleas to just tell Connor the truth, Amanda looks up and asks, “What now?” And it is Kenya who suggests leaving. And never looking back.

***

Amanda loved Connor Lang and she _hates_ Hunter Bell. That much is clear. She hates the man, the clothes he inhabits, the very air that he breathes, and she doesn’t understand why Kenya, her little, sweet Kenya, stays with him.

Kenya also doesn’t remember why. She doesn’t remember how she got the scars on her back (the telltale scars that she - _Indogene_ Kenya - no longer carries). How can you be betrayed by the absence of a thing? And yet, it stings.

“You are too loving, too giving,” Amanda says.

“You don’t have to put up with it. We can leave again. We can go. There’s nothing keeping us here,” Amanda says, but it’s a lie. Amanda loves Defiance.

Kenya can see her face so clearly in her mind, but it’s like looking in the mirror. The image is of her sister, but the chirality doesn’t quite compute. Always taking care of her, her big sister, and now she must take care of Amanda in return, to pay her back for all the years that it was just the two of them together.

Amanda hated Hunter Bell, and now Hunter Bell is gone.

“I’m keeping the name,” Kenya says to her sister. “It’s a good name.”

You gotta give him that much. _NeedWant_. What else is there? The basic human desires.

“Burn the shtak-hole to the ground,” Amanda suggests, her teeth gnashing against each other so hard that Kenya can feel it in her own jaw.

“I can do better than that,” she says. And she does.

***

It’s no use. These are all Amanda’s thoughts, Amanda’s feelings. They don’t tell her anything about the real Kenya Rosewater. Oh, she feels loved. She feels wanted. She knows that - _that_ she ran from, the stench of it, the emotions, the _humanity_.

An Indogene doesn’t belong with a human. What was Amanda thinking? She could keep her as a damn _pet_? The opposite, thank you very much. Humans are a thing for an Indogene to toy with, to study, poke and prod, and finally - to emulate. To create oneself in their image so convincingly that they’d never ever be able to tell. It is to be a God. Rayetsu. Irzu. She isn’t sure of the name for an Indogene God. (Worst Indogene _ever_.) For all she knows, her people only worship science.

But she _doesn’t_ know. She can only close her eyes and try to remember. Just open those floodgates and come what may.

***

The Votans don’t have a concept of Christmas. Truth be told, they didn’t really have much of a concept of Winter Solstice either, because the Earth calendar didn’t quite sit right with their perception of time passage. But Amanda thinks there’s something beautiful about celebrating the fact that from that point on, each subsequent night will be a little shorter, each subsequent day a bit longer. Just by minutes, but these are extra minutes you can stand in the sun. 

Kenya doesn’t understand what’s so great about the sun - as if their skin needed anymore radioactivity and mutagenesis. Did her sister want to sprout an extra head? She teases Amanda mercilessly, as her older sister drags some weather-ravaged bush into their tiny room.

“Do you remember, Kenya? We used to put up a Christmas tree every year? And our parents would put presents underneath it - and then lie to us and tell us it was some bearded, fat guy named... Santy Claus?”

No. Kenya doesn’t remember anything. Not even in this memory within a memory. 

“Tinsel,” she finally says and Amanda’s eyes light up.

“That’s right! We always insisted on putting as much tinsel up on it as possible. Just make the whole tree sparkle! Like ice upon the branches.” 

Amanda brushes her hands along the branches and Kenya thinks the tree is all wrong, even though she’s not certains what it’s _supposed_ to look like. But she’s pretty sure it’s not supposed to be purple and have weird orange fruit-nuts hanging from the branches. Are they even edible?

“Don’t eat those, Kenya!”

Her big sister - always telling her what to do. Just because she’s six years older and has boys chasing her like she’s some kind of a… well… night porter. Kenya isn’t sure what that means, but she knows her sister isn’t one of those porter things.

“What are we gonna do with it then?” Kenya might only be ten years old but it’s not like she’s lacking in common sense.

“Decorate it,” Amanda’s smile could eclipse the sun. Even a radioactive sun.

“With what?” They don’t have much, and it seems wasteful to put whatever they do have onto the tree.

“We’ll think of something,” Amanda shrugs and runs her hands along the purple branches again. “We’ll figure it out, like we always do.”

Kenya doesn’t remember stealing the necklace from the Castithan merchant’s wife. But she does remember the smile on Amanda’s face when she hangs it from the top of their tree. It lights up the room.

***

Kenya Rosewater doesn’t remember Stahma Tarr. Oh, she’s sure she would’ve loved her, had she known her, because Kenya Rosewater loved all her constituents equally (or so Amanda believes). That woman in white. The way she looked at her, as if she had seen a ghost. Herself much like a ghost. Those Casti women, floating across the planet in their flowing white garbs, like shadows, like shadows of shadows, if you count their husbands to be shades as well. An army of shades. A whole Grecian underworld.

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Kenya,” Amanda says.

“You’re always so headstrong and willful,” Amanda says.

Kenya Rosewater is dead, yet Kenya Rosewater doesn’t remember how or why.

But she remembers some things. That ash blonde hair, that looked honey-gold in the sunlight. The way her hand felt so small in her sister’s larger hand. The way the road stretched out seemingly endlessly before them. But she was never afraid - that’s why, even now, she knows no fear. She remembers Amanda. 

The road stretches out before her, the long sweep towards a promised ocean. The roller roars and thrusts beneath her like a mythical beast. She remembers enough. She remembers she is loved. She remembers.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the prompt! I love Defiance and this really made me contemplate Kenya and Amanda's relationship in a way I hadn't done before. Happy Yule!


End file.
